Category: MORPS

MORPS 2016 team projections posted below. 2015 team projections only picked 50% of the playoff teams which is better than the 2014. We definitely missed on the Kansas City Royals and their World Series win. On the positive side, we did predict playoff runs for the Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers, Pirates and Blue Jays. Our only miss in the NL was the Cubs over the Nationals. The AL is another story. In addition to the Royals, we also missed on the Astros, Rangers, and Yankees. Predicting 50% of the playoff participants isn’t bad considering the number of roster changes that happen during the course of the season. Between 2013 and 2010, MORPS team projections averaged 73%. We are hoping move in that direction this year.

This year’s team projections are as follows:

American League

2014 AL East

Wins

Losses

Toronto

90

72

Boston

83

79

Tampa Bay

81

81

Baltimore

78

84

New York

75

87

2014 AL Central

Wins

Losses

Cleveland

88

74

Detroit

83

79

Chicago

80

82

Minnesota

77

85

Kansas City

73

89

2014 AL West

Wins

Losses

Seattle

87

75

Houston

86

76

Texas

82

80

Los Angeles

78

84

Oakland

77

85

National League

2014 NL East

Wins

Losses

New York

97

65

Washington

87

75

Miami

81

81

Atlanta

67

95

Philadelphia

64

98

2014 NL Central

Wins

Losses

Chicago

92

70

Saint Louis

84

78

Pittsburgh

82

80

Cincinnati

75

87

Milwaukee

74

88

2014 NL West

Wins

Losses

Los Angeles

95

67

San Francisco

88

74

Arizona

81

81

San Diego

73

89

Colorado

71

91

The Division winners in the NL are New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles with Washington and San Francisco slipping in as the wild card teams. The division winners are certainly not a surprise nor are the wildcard teams. The American League Division winners will be Toronto, Cleveland, and Seattle with Houston as a wildcard team. Boston and Detroit will play a one game playoff to determine the last wildcard spot. Unlike the NL, MORPS predictions in the AL will be s surprise to most. USA Today has Cleveland finishing third and Seattle fourth.

While the team with the most wins don’t always do that well in the playoffs, such distinctions can’t be made with a projection system built around “Runs Created” and “Runs Allowed”. MORPS is projecting an AL championship between Cleveland and Toronto with Toronto going to the world series. In the National League it will be Los Angeles versus New York with the Mets going to the world series. MORPS projects that the New York Mets will win the series in 6 games.

Those that want more information on the projection methodology can click here.

2016 MORPS projections are finally ready. Unlike the baseline projections published several weeks ago, these projections include all players projected to win a MLB roster spot on opening day. I have also included a number of impact rookies who are projected to join a roster early or mid-season in 2016. Rookie projections use stats generated during either minor league or international play. Factors are applied to adjust the stats to MLB equivalent stats. MORPS projections also account for expected adjustments in personal playing time.

The excel version of the projections include a key tab that defines all headings used in the projections. In short, fantasy baseball players that play in rotisserie leagues should key on the R-ROTO and ROTO columns. ROTO is a point value derived from weights on the categories in a standard 5×5 rotisserie league. R-ROTO is the player ranking based upon the ROTO point values. If you league uses a customer scoring system, you can use the projections in the categories of interest to customize your rankings. Fantasy baseball players that play in a more realistic format like Baseball Manager or a similar simulation league should reorder the pitching based upon OERV and the batting based upon RC. OERV stands for Out Earned Run Value. This stat attempts to value a pitcher by combining ERA with the value of number of innings pitched. This is a way for fantasy managers in simulation leagues to compare the value of a relief pitcher with a starter or a starter who pitches 200 innings with one that pitches 100 with a slightly lower ERA. RC is Runs Created. A league like Baseball Manager uses RC as a basis for the points they generate in their daily games. The more realistic the simulation, the closer the hitting will align with RC.

For those who like to resort the projections for their own fantasy system, make sure you filter out the players with a roster status of “N”. These players will most likely not make an opening day 25 man roster. Those players who were still in competition for a position were included with a roster status of “Y” in most cases. I posted the “N” players for those managers who have keeper leagues or deeper rosters that may want to pull one of these folks onto their list.

The 2016 MORPS baseline projections are ready. This is the third year we have provided baselines. These projections use all the models we have put together over the years for projecting player performance. This means that the projections are still based on four years of data, positional mean regression, etc. However, they do not account for a player changing positions, reductions in playing time, new players to the big leagues, etc. We entered all MLB player transactions into system since the end of the regular season last year. While this doesn’t guarantee that we have caught every trade, free agent move or player being waived; we are hoping that the majority of these type of transactions were captured in the system.

Some may like the baseline projections more than the final version. I read one review of MORPS in 2014 that criticized the fact that we took the time to model anticipate plate appearances and batters faced for each team before releasing our final projections. They didn’t consider that process “scientific”. Our perspective is that the modeling allows us to adjust the ratios between each stat and plate appearance or batter faced to account for situations that weren’t present the year before. This could be a player being part of a platoon when they played the position full-time the year before. It could be a reduction in playing time due to the appearance of a blockbuster free agent or anticipated rookie hitting the big leagues. It could also be a pitcher coming back from Tommy John surgery after being out of the game for over a year. Regardless of the situation, we believe that the modeling of plate appearances and batters faced for each team adds significant value to MORPS projections. This view is supported by our #1 ranking in 2014 for player projections using root mean square error (RMSE). If you still doubt our ability to accurately model these situations or you have an early fantasy draft and need something now, you’re in luck. You can use our baseline projections.

So…. without further ado, we present the 2016 MORPS Baseline Projections. The Batting and Pitching projections are available in excel and PDF formats. Follow the links below to download your copy.

If you player Roto baseball, you will find the projections already sorted in Roto Rank order. If you play a more realistic version of fantasy baseball, like BBM, you will need to re-sort the XLS spreadsheet in RC order for batters and OERV order for pitchers. Play Ball!

Each year we take a moment to review our projections against the actual season results. First lets look at the team projections. We definitely missed on the Kansas City Royals and their World Series win. On the positive side, we did predict playoff runs for the Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers, Pirates and Blue Jays. Our only miss in the NL was the Cubs over the Nationals. The AL is another story. In addition to the Royals, we also missed on the Astros, Rangers, and Yankees. Predicting 50% of the playoff participants isn’t bad considering the number of roster changes that happen during the course of the season.

For individual projections, we were pleasantly surprised that MORPS was the number one overall projection system in terms of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) according to The Baseball Projection Project. The 2014 results were published in March on Fangraphs – click here. Based upon improvements implemented for 2015, our hope is that those results are replicated when 2015 results are published later this year. For fantasy owners, this means that MORPS has the lowest error rate of all published projection systems on the market. A lower error rate means that you can rely on the order that players are ranked within the MORPS projection system.

Overall predictive capability was another rating category tackled by The Baseball Projection Project. MORPS didn’t do as well in this category. Upon analysis, this is due to the regression to the mean built into the MORPS engine. This doesn’t have a huge impact on established players. It does have an impact on players with three or less years of experience or players returning from lengthy injuries. We’ll be looking into this further to determine if there is a way to compete effectively in both categories effectively in the future.

Going into 2016, we are confident that our free projection system stacks up quite well with all of the systems out there. This includes those that cost quite a bit of money to access.

MORPS 2015 team projections are finished and posted below. 2014 team projections only picked 40% of the playoff teams which is worse than past years. Teams like Baltimore and San Francisco were surprises while Texas and Colorado were major disappointments. Between 2013 and 2010, MORPS team projections averaged 73%. We are hoping to get back on the winning track this year.

This year’s team projections are as follows:

American League

2014 AL East

Wins

Losses

Boston

88

74

Toronto

88

74

Tampa Bay

82

80

New York

78

84

Baltimore

75

87

2014 AL Central

Wins

Losses

Detroit

88

74

Cleveland

83

79

Chicago

83

79

Kansas City

80

82

Minnesota

72

90

2014 AL West

Wins

Losses

Seattle

89

73

Los Angeles

87

75

Texas

77

85

Oakland

76

86

Houston

72

90

National League

2014 NL East

Wins

Losses

Washington

91

71

New York

83

79

Miami

79

83

Atlanta

77

85

Philadelphia

74

88

2014 NL Central

Wins

Losses

Saint Louis

85

77

Pittsburgh

84

78

Chicago

82

80

Milwaukee

81

81

Cincinnati

75

87

2014 NL West

Wins

Losses

Los Angeles

94

68

San Francisco

80

82

Arizona

79

83

San Diego

77

85

Colorado

73

89

The Division winners in the NL are Washington, Saint Louis and Los Angeles with Pittsburgh and New York slipping in as the wild card teams. Yes, I know – I just predicated the Mets to make the playoffs – go figure. The American League Division winners will be Boston, Detroit and Seattle with Toronto and Los Angeles as the wild card teams.

While the team with the most wins don’t always do that well in the playoffs, such distinctions can’t be made with a projection system built around “Runs Created” and “Runs Allowed”. However, “Runs Created” and “Runs Allowed” do not always translate into the same number of wins if one team plays in a tougher division than another. MORPS is projecting an AL championship between Boston and Toronto with Boston going to the world series. In the National League it will be Los Angeles versus Washington with Los Angeles going to the world series. MORPS projects that the Dodgers will win the series in 6 games.

Those that want more information on the projection methodology can click here.

2015 MORPS projections are ready. Unlike the baseline projections published several weeks ago, these projections include all players projected to win a MLB roster spot on opening day. Rookie projections use stats generated during either minor league or international play. Factors are applied to adjust the stats to MLB equivalent stats. MORPS projections also account for expected adjustments in personal playing time.

The excel version of the projections include a key tab that defines all headings used in the projections. In short, fantasy baseball players that play in rotisserie leagues should key on the R-ROTO and ROTO columns. ROTO is a point value derived from weights on the categories in a standard 5×5 rotisserie league. R-ROTO is the player ranking based upon the ROTO point values. If you league uses a customer scoring system, you can use the projections in the categories of interest to customize your rankings. Fantasy baseball players that play in a more realistic format like Baseball Manager or a similar simulation league should reorder the pitching based upon OERV and the batting based upon RC. OERV stands for Out Earned Run Value. This stat attempts to value a pitcher by combining ERA with the value of number of innings pitched. This is a way for fantasy managers in simulation leagues to compare the value of a relief pitcher with a starter or a starter who pitches 200 innings with one that pitches 100 with a slightly lower ERA. RC is Runs Created. A league like Baseball Manager uses RC as a basis for the points they generate in their daily games. The more realistic the simulation, the closer the hitting will align with RC.

Team projections for 2015 will be posted within the next week. Unfortunately, I will not have time this year to post an update to the roto draft tool. Last year’s tool is still available on this site. If someone wants to take the initiative to update the tool with this year’s projections, I would be happy to post your updated on the site.

For those who like to resort the projections for their own fantasy system, make sure you filter out the players with a roster status of “N”. These players will most likely not make an opening day 25 man roster. Those players who were still in competition for a position were included with a roster status of “Y” in most cases. I posted the “N” players for those managers who have keeper leagues or deeper rosters that may want to pull one of these folks onto their list.

In 2014 I published a set of Baseline projections. These projections used all the models we have put together over the years for projecting player performance. This means that the projections are still based on four years of data, positional mean regression, etc. However, they do not account for a player changing positions, reductions in playing time, new players to the big leagues, etc. Unlike last year, we did enter all MLB player transactions into system since the end of the season last year. While this doesn’t guarantee that we have caught every trade, free agent move or player being waived; we are hoping that the majority of these type of transactions were captured in the system.

Some may like the baseline projections more than the final version. I read one review of MORPS last year that criticized the fact that we took the time to model anticipate plate appearances and batters faced for each team before releasing our final projections. They didn’t consider that process “scientific”. Our perspective is that the modeling allows us to adjust the ratios between each stat and plate appearance or batter faced to account for situations that weren’t present the year before. This could be a player being part of a platoon when they played the position full-time the year before. It could be a reduction in playing time due to the appearance of a blockbuster free agent or anticipated rookie hitting the big leagues. It could also be a pitcher coming back from Tommy John surgery after being out of the game for over a year. Regardless of the situation, we believe that the modeling of plate appearances and batters faced for each team adds significant value to MORPS projections. If you doubt our ability to accurately model these situations or you have an early fantasy draft and need something now, you’re in luck. You can use our baseline projections.

So…. Drum roll please. Without further ado, we present the 2015 MORPS Baseline Projections. The Batting and Pitching projections are available in excel and PDF formats. Follow the links below to download your copy.

If you player Roto baseball, you will find the projections already sorted in Roto Rank order. If you play a more realistic version of fantasy baseball, like BBM, you will need to re-sort the XLS spreadsheet in RC order for batters and OERV order for pitchers. Play Ball!